Tag: assimilation

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Humanities Washington Talks Mexico Talks and other events Trump u.s.-mexico border Uncategorized United States

THEY LOOK LIKE ME….NEXT TIME IT MIGHT BE YOU OR ME

They look like me. In the victims and survivors of the Ohio and El Paso shootings, today, August 5, 2019, I saw people who look like me, or my relatives or my friends. The El Paso shooter was attacking “Hispanic immigrants.”

Well, that’s me, folks, even if I might feel safe because I’m not an immigrant. The psychos out there don’t know the difference between a Hispanic immigrant and one who is not an immigrant (most Americans can’t distinguish between a different-looking immigrant and an American born one). So, I say to my relatives and my friends, we can’t get too comfortable in our middle class homes and middle class cars, going to our middle class jobs. Why?

Because here is one more bit of proof that we must be forever vigilant. We run a great risk in dismissing these things because, who knows, the next time, it might be you or me.

We can’t be shocked. Mentally unstable people abound on our streets. Guns abound too; our gun laws encourage their being everywhere—even military type guns. And, we now have a racist president who openly attacks Americans of color.

So, there you have it. The psychos will pick up a gun or a knife and go after someone who looks like you or me because our simple-minded president mentioned it as an American problem. They’ll think they’re helping him out, like the El Paso shooter. It’s happened before.

What can we do?

1) Let’s be vigilant and avoid losing ourselves in the banality of our lives;

2) Let’s pay more attention to our leaders and what they do or don’t do,

3) And, keep score.

3) Our turn will come when we vote, when we fill out a ballot and give our support to a government leader who is not what we have today. Save our democracy, save our nation and save ourselves.

 

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Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Talks and other events We Became Mexican American, a book

Video of Carlos Gil discussing his Humanities Washington talk

In the link below you’ll find a short video clip of me explaining what my Humanities Washington talk (“From Mexican to Mexican-American: A Family Immigrant Story”) offers to the listener. My talks, featured throughout 2019, have already started and, so far, it’s been delightful. See a separate posting for dates and places.

Carlos Gil

 

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Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Talks and other events u.s.-mexico border United States We Became Mexican American, a book

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S.

 

For the talk, “From Mexican to Mexican-American:

A Family Immigration Story”

By Carlos B.Gil,  Ph.D.

 Humanities Washington Speaker 2019

 

Acuña, Rodolfo.Occupied America (1988). Contentious text.

Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (2000).

Brown, Theresa Cardinal and Jeff Mason, “Immigration Trends and the Immigration Debate,” Bi Partisan Policy Center, August 2017. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/immigration-trends-and-the-immigration-debate/

De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Et al. Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (1992).

Foley, Neil. Mexicans in the Making of America (2014).

Galarza, Ernesto. Barrio Boy: The Story of a Boy’s Acculturation (1971).

Gamboa, Erasmo. Bracero Railroad Workers: The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in the U.S. West (2016).

Gamboa, Erasmo. Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947 (1990).

Gamio, Manuel. Mexican Immigration to the United States (1939).

García, Mario T. Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology and Identity, 1930–1960 (1989).

Gil, Carlos B. We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream (2012, 2014).

Griswold del Castillo and Arnoldo de León. North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States (1997).

Hart, Elva Treviño Barefoot Heart, Stories of a Migrant Child (1999). Autobiography, south Texas.

Limón, José. José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir (1998?). Late Chicano/Mexican American choreographer.

McWilliams, Carey. North from Mexico: The Spanish Speaking People of the United States (1948 ed.) Old classic.

Ramón, Cristobal and Tim O’Shea. “Immigrants and Public Benefits: What Does the Research Say?” Bi Partisan Policy Center, November 2018. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Immigrants-and-Public-Benefits-What-Does-the-Research-Say.pdf

Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (1998).

Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American:Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles (1993).

Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. And Mariela M. Páez. Latinos: Remaking America (2002).

Young, Biloine W. A Dream for Gilberto: An Immigrant’s Family’s Struggle to Become American (1999). Colombian Americans.

Categories
Talks and other events We Became Mexican American, a book

INVITE CARLOS B. GIL TO TALK ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

INVITE CARLOS B. GIL TO TALK ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE MEMBERS OF YOUR ORGANIZATION IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH THROUGH HUMANITIES WASHINGTON

 

 How?                                                                                             (See Spanish below)

Applications are open to host a Speakers Bureau event for 2019. Learn more and apply today at https//www.humanities.org/program/speakers-bureau/

If you have any questions? Contact Hannah Schwendeman at hannah@humanities.org or call 206-682-1770 ext. 101

 What is Humanities Washington?

 Humanities Washington’s Speakers Bureau is a statewide program that offers high-quality speakers who give engaging presentations on history, politics, art, and everything in between. Funding, resources, and promotion are provided to create successful events in your community. Last year, we partnered with over 175 organizations to reach more than 12,000 Washington residents.

Take a look at our 33 new speakers, carefully selected for their expertise, exciting topics, and ability to inspire discussion at, https//www.humanities.org/programs/upcoming-speakers/

Check out Carlos B. Gil as the Humanities Washington speaker on Mexican immigration here: https://www.humanities.org/speaker/carlos-gil/

 Name of Gil’s talk:                                      

 “From Mexican to Mexican-American: A Family Immigration Story.”

As immigration has become more hotly debated in the United States, the arguments have become cartoonish, with one side often painted as naïve and another as xenophobic. What has become lost is the human story of immigration to America, with all its complexity, heartache, and hope.

Carlos B. Gil sought to understand Mexican immigration to the United States by tracing his family’s history from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. In the process, he discovered the excitement, culture shock, inter-family conflict, and questions of identity that so many face who are seeking a better life in another place. Based on his book, We Became Mexican-American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream, his talk explores these topics, including immigration to Washington State, all through the lens of a single family’s story.

Carlos B. Gil is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Washington, where he taught the history of Mexico and other Latin American countries for over thirty years. He previously toured the state offering a public lecture entitled, “The Hispanization of the United States.” A Spanish language version of his book will be available in early 2019.

Gil lives in Seattle.

This talk is available in both English and Spanish.

INVITA A QUE CARLOS B. GIL DÉ UNA CHARLA ACERCA DE LA INMIGRACIÓN MEXICANA A LOS MIEMBROS DE TU ORGANIZACIÓN A TRAVÉS DE HUMANITIES WASHINGTON

 ¿Cómo?

Haz tu solicitud. Las solicitudes están abiertas para presentar la charla del profesor Gil o cualquier otro evento del Buró de Conferencistas de Humanities Washington para el año 2019. P       uedes obtener más información y presentar tu solicitud hoy en https // www.humanities.org / program / speakers-bureau /

¿Si tienes alguna pregunta? Pónte en contacto con Hannah Schwendeman en hannah@humanities.org o llama al 206-682-1770 ext. 101.

Nombre de la charla del profesor Gil:

 De mexicano a mexicano-americano: la historia de una familia inmigrante.

A medida que la inmigración se ha debatido más acaloradamente en los Estados Unidos, los argumentos se han vuelto caricaturescos, con un lado pintado a menudo como ingenuo y otro como xenófobo. Lo que se ha perdido es la historia humana de la inmigración a Estados Unidos, con toda su complejidad, angustia y esperanza.

El profesor Gil trató de entender la inmigración mexicana a Estados Unidos al rastrear la historia de su propia familia desde la década de 1920 hasta la de 1970. En el proceso, descubrió la emoción, el choque cultural, el conflicto entre familias y las cuestiones de identidad que enfrentan muchos que buscan una vida mejor en otro lugar.

Basada en su libro, We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream, esta charla explora estos temas, incluyendo la inmigración al estado de Washington, todo a través de un lente puesto a la historia de su familia.

Carlos B. Gil es profesor emérito de historia en la Universidad de Washington, donde dictó clases de la historia de México y otros países de América Latina durante más de treinta años. Anteriormente, realizó una gira por el estado ofreciendo una conferencia pública titulada “La hispanización de los Estados Unidos.” Una versión en español de su libro estará disponible en los primeros meses de 2019.

El Profesor Gil vive en Seattle.

Él puede dar esta charla en inglés y español.

 

 

Categories
Book Reviews United States We Became Mexican American, a book

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis–a book review

Vance, J.D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: Harper, 2018), with a new Afterword. With good reason, Hillbilly Elegy received widespread attention when it was first published. Put on the market by Harper in 2016, it coincided with the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and his getting elected soon thereafter. His popularity was attributed to his being able to speak on behalf of poor white Americans, especially those from the south who had supposedly been neglected by Democratic administrations. To my knowledge, Mr. Trump did not use the term, “hillbilly” to refer to his loyal supporters but Vance identifies hillbilly people as Trump supporters. Understanding them came to mean also understanding Trump’s inveterate supporters.

In any case, this book offers a penetrating insight into the people who live in Appalachia, mostly under-privileged whites who allegedly claim Scot-Irish descendence, a cultural note discussed far too briefly. The author writes his book in a compelling and disarming manner, boldly revealing personal family information, sometimes in a startling way. This combination helped give Hillbilly Elegy considerable attention.

The author tells us that he grew up, surrounded by his extended family, in one of the many hollows (“hollers”) scoured into the Allegheny Mountains near Jackson, Kentucky, and so his book puts a spot light on his mountain people, a harsh light. Many of them manifest varying levels of paranoia, to tell the truth. His grandfather’s obsession with guns and a willingness to draw one from behind his back at the slightest threat, his grandmother’s use of foul language and his mother’s abuse of drugs and her chronic inability to keep a husband or boyfriend are examples of this neurotic-paranoiac behavior. In addition, many of the author’s relatives and friends are described as “welfare queens,” some who “drive a Cadillac,” allergic to holding a job, and hostile to the world outside, interest in politics being unquestionably peripheral.

I concluded that a large part of the behavior described in Hillbilly is reminiscent of many poor families, working class and non-working, including Mexican American families and other minority families of color in the United States. Hillbilly thus confirmed in my mind that skin color and cultural antecedence are only casual differences among underprivileged people and they all feel put upon by the people who do not live on the edge. Except for a handful of words, here and there, the author does not make these cross-cultural observations.

Another parallel with minority families is that Mamaw, the author’s grandmother, was able to recognize a gem in the rough, despite her educational and social limitations: the gem is the author, himself. She nurtures him, because his parents couldn’t, even when she skewers him with unexpectedly obscene language, and helps him become somebody (a Yale lawyer and author!). This happens in minority communities too where someone discovers a child possessing enough internal fire to escape the ghetto, in this case, to flee the “hollers” of Kentucky. This book is an elegy to the author’s grandmother, most of all.

Mamaw takes young Vance to live in Middletown, Ohio. On page 252 the author writes that he felt like a “cultural emigrant” in Ohio. He came to regard white middle-class people in Middletown as aliens and so the latter half of Hillbilly Elegy offers an account of his painful assimilation into White Middle-Class America.

Blacks, who fled the South in the 1940’s, landing in places like Detroit, felt something similar, just more extreme. Immigrants, Mexican or otherwise, know fully well what it feels to be a “cultural emigrant,” as I show in my own book, Becoming Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream.

Hillbilly Elegy helps us understand less privileged white Americans to be sure. But, as I note, it is a study of poor people anywhere. And, for this reason it also contains cross-cultural implications of the kind I identify here that many emigrants from Appalachia might not relish.